No Longer Nameless: Operation Choke Point Closing A Gun Store Near You?

The threat Operation Choke Point poses to the Second Amendment has been real on paper without being tangible for quite some time. Now, however, with at least one gun store owner talking about the pressure brought to bear against his business by Operation Choke Point–any abstraction associated with the Department of Justice’s operation has vanished.

Breitbart News has previously reported that Schuetz is in Hawkins, Wisconsin. His gun company–Hawkins Guns LLC–ran its accounts through Heritage Credit Union in Hawkins until said credit union called him in for a meeting and told him to close his account because “they do not service businesses that deal in guns.”

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Schuetz said: “This is just a back door way for those wanting to infringe on your rights to keep and bear arms and is nothing more than discrimination to gun owners.”

The United States Consumer Coalition (USCC) reported that the cause behind the cancellation of the gun store’s accounts could be traced to visits by examiners from the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA). USCC reported that Heritage Credit Union said the NCUA “put the screws to [them]” regarding the types of accounts they could and could not do business with. Schuetz gun store was a casualty of these visits.

On May 19 Breitbart News reported the House Oversight Committee’s warning that the DOJ was using a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) assessment to go after firearm and ammunition dealers under the guise that they were “high risk” businesses–this is the crux of Operation Choke Point. And since then, pro-Second Amendment Representatives like Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO-3) have pressed to have the DOJ operation defunded.